An exhibition at the at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has come in for protest from local viewers and elected officials for images they deem to be harmful to children.

“Diaries of Home,” according to the museum’s website, “features works by women and nonbinary artists, who explore the multilayered concepts of family, community, and home.” Among the 13 artists included is photographer Sally Mann, whose family portraits, which often include images of her children in the nude, the museum describes as “intimate and compelling.” 

Local government officials and some museum visitors see the images very differently. 

“There are images on display at this museum that are grossly inappropriate at best,” Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare told the Dallas Express. “They should be taken down immediately and investigated by law enforcement for any and all potential criminal violations. Children must be protected, and decency must prevail.”

Locals speaking to the Dallas Express complained of “pedophilia” and “child rape.” There is no explicit sexual activity in the photographs, which are highly stylized and aesthetically beautiful. 

Co-organized by chief curator Andrea Karnes and assistant curator Clare Milliken, “Diaries of Home” also includes works by Patty Chang, Jess T. Dugan, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Nan Goldin, Debbie Grossman, Letitia Huckaby, Deana Lawson, Laura Letinsky, Arlene Mejorado, Catherine Opie, Laurie Simmons, and Carrie Mae Weems. A page about the show on the museum’s website warns that the show features “mature themes that may be sensitive for some viewers.”

“The controversy surrounding Sally Mann’s photographs is deeply troubling and is not an isolated incident,” said Julie Trébault, executive director of Artists at Risk Coalition (ARC), a nonprofit that works to safeguard artistic freedom, in an email. “Rather, it reflects a broader, escalating trend of censorship targeting artists and institutions whose work challenges societal norms or explores sensitive topics. In recent years, organized efforts—often driven by political figures, advocacy groups, and community actors—have sought to discredit or remove artworks addressing themes like identity, gender, sexuality, race, and family. 

“These include legislative attacks on LGBTQ+ content, threats to public funding, and public campaigns that mischaracterize art as obscene or harmful,” Trébault added. “This growing wave of censorship, which disproportionately targets women, LGBTQ+ creators, and artists from historically marginalized groups, often relies on the construction of a controversy as pretext for a wider purge of targeted artwork.”

Other local elected officials seconded O’Hare’s protest.

“This is emblematic of what happens when the culture of a city is focused on growth and business only,” Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French told the Express. “If you’re not also focused on upholding moral standards, this kind of degeneracy creeps in. Our wonderful museums should be promoting excellence instead of radical perversion. These values are indistinguishable from San Francisco’s.”

“Protecting society’s most vulnerable, particularly our children, was a key motivator for my decision to run for office,” House District 91 State Representative-elect David Lowe told the Express. “It is crucial that our legal framework leaves no room for predators to misuse the realm of art to display child nudity. Should any loopholes exist, we are prepared to address and eliminate them in the upcoming legislative session in Texas.”

A formal complaint was filed with the Fort Worth Police Department, a spokesman confirmed via email, specifying that “It is currently an active investigation so information will not be shared at this time.”

Mann’s work has long been the subject of controversy. A 1992 New York Times Magazine cover article, “The Disturbing Photography of Sally Mann,” published to coincide with a show of her work, noted that a federal prosecutor informed her that “no fewer than eight pictures she had chosen for the traveling exhibition could subject her to arrest.”

The author, Richard B. Woodward, asked questions like, “Has she knowingly put [her children] at risk by releasing these pictures into a world where pedophilia exists? Can young children freely give their consent for controversial portraits, even if—especially if—the artist is their parent?”

Mann did not immediately reply for a request for an interview or comment, directed to her gallery, Gagosian. She did write an article for the Times Magazine in 2015 in which she defended her work and looked back on the unwelcome attention and criticism her photos and Woodward’s article had inspired. 

“All too often, nudity, even that of children, is mistaken for sexuality, and images are mistaken for actions,” wrote Mann. “The image of the child is especially subject to that kind of perceptual dislocation; children are not just the innocents that we expect them to be… But in a culture so deeply invested in a cult of childhood innocence, we are understandably reluctant to acknowledge these discordant aspects or, as I found out, even fictionalized depictions of them.”

Born in 1951 in Lexington, Va., and still living there, Mann has been featured in solo museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the world since her first, in 1973. She was the subject of a 2018–20 solo exhibition, “Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings,” that appeared at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., before traveling across the U.S. and to Paris.

Mann has racked up numerous recognitions, including a Guggenheim fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. She was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial, and Time magazine dubbed her “America’s best photographer” in 2001. Her book Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (2015) was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Awards and in 2016 won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. 

She was the subject of the 1994 documentary Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. Co-directed by Steven Cantor and Peter Spirer, it treats the controversy around her 1992 book Immediate Family, featuring photos of her children. Cantor followed up with the 2005 full-length documentary What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann, which the New York Times’s Ginia Bellafante called “one of the most exquisitely intimate portraits not only of an artist’s process, but also of a marriage and a life, to appear on television in recent memory.”

“Dairies of Home” is on view at the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell Street, through February 2.